New England Plane Crashes That Never Happened
The following stories are about New England aviation accidents that never happened, although in some cases they were reported as fact. Perhaps this is how legends get started.
On April 3, 1906, great excitement rippled through the populace of the small town of Franklin, Massachusetts, as word spread that an airship had crashed in the northern part of town. Dozens flocked to the area, but found nothing. Had the airship been repaired and left? Hardly. It wasn’t exactly April Fools, but it was close enough for a man identified only as a “practical joker” living in north Franklin near the Medway town line. The day before, a large number of people reported seeing what they thought was an airship pass over the town. The joker took it one step further and told several people that the airship had broken down, and landed in a field near his farm. As with the childhood game of “Telephone”, the landing became a crash, as the facts were twisted with each retelling.
On November 25, 1923, it was reported that a small airplane carrying two Yale football players/students, in route from Boston to New Haven, had crashed in the Thames River in Connecticut. The team manager attempted to verify the report, but was unsuccessful as the football team had all gone their separate ways after the game with Harvard, and would be back to class for several days. The report turned out to be a hoax.
On August 6, 1933, a rumor began that a large aircraft bound from New York to Boston had crashed in a wooded area near the Rhode Island – Connecticut state line in the town of Stonington, Connecticut. Two persons were reportedly killed and others injured.
A large search was conducted which included two aircraft, but nothing was found. Furthermore, there were no reports of any missing or overdue aircraft.
The following three incidents took place in 1942 at a time when our country was immersed in the Second World War. Were they the result of wartime jitters, overactive imaginations, or something else?
On April 25, 1942, the North Providence, (R.I.) police department began to receive reports that an army bomber had crashed and burst into flames somewhere in the town. Some reported seeing a column of smoke, but couldn’t tell the exact location from where it originated. A search was instituted, and army officials were notified, and as word spread citizens were on the alert.
By the afternoon the Associated Press was carrying the story. An army public relations officer in Boston stated he believed the craft to be an army bomber, and although he didn’t know how many men were aboard, the usual number was five.
An army observation plane was brought in to assist with the search, but by the end of the day nothing had been found, and no military aircraft were unaccounted for.
Less than a week later, a man in Bellingham, Massachusetts, reported that he saw a twin-engine army aircraft flying at tree-top level and assumed it crashed in a wooded area near Silver Lake. Apparently his assumption was based on the fact the engines weren’t making any sound, and that at one pint he saw the wings clip the trees.
Bellingham police notified the army, and a search was instituted. Residents in the Spring Street section told officers they had seen an army aircraft pass low in the sky with its engines throttled down, but didn’t know anything about a crash. One citizen stated the plane had passed directly over him and then suddenly disappeared.
Police officers, firefighters, and civilian volunteers searched through the woods for several hours, but didn’t find anything, and the army determined that none of its planes were missing.
The fourth case didn’t involve a report of an actual plane crash, but of parachutes descending from the sky – possibly from a disabled aircraft.
At about 5:45 p.m. on November 4 1942, Sgt. Michael Ryan of the Fall River police was stopped by a motorist who reported seeing parachutists descending over the area of the Fall River Reservoir located in the northern part of the city. A short time later another person approached him with the same report. One claimed to have seen one parachute and a plane, the other, three parachutes.
At about the same time frame, Patrolman Michael Hart received a report of parachutes as he patrolled the central portion of the city.
At 6:30 p.m. another call about parachutes was received at police headquarters.
Patrol cars sent to investigate found nothing, and aircraft spotters stationed in a fire tower near the reservoir hadn’t seen any parachutes.
Yet reports kept coming, and chutes were also allegedly seen over Fall River’s neighboring communities, and in nearby Rhode Island. Strangely, nobody had reported a plane crash, only parachutes, which raised the possibility of enemy saboteurs.
State and local police, aided by auxiliary volunteers, and the army, scoured the landscape in both states, but nothing was found. At one point excitement rose when one group of volunteers reported that the parachutists were “bottled up” in Narragansett Bay, but this too was false.
Authorities learned that neither the army nor the navy was missing any aircraft, and there had been no reported bailouts or scheduled parachute jumps in the area. No explanation for the sightings was ever given.
On April 20, 1947, a resident of Madison, Connecticut, reported seeing a “stubby” aircraft plunge into Long Island Sound off Hamonasset Beach. After several hours of searching by state and local police, the Coast Guard, and civil aircraft overhead, nothing was found.
On the night of April 21, 1954, three Warwick fire companies and several police vehicles were dispatched to the area of Blackburn Street for a report of a plane crash. Upon arrival responders discovered a brush fire, but no plane crash.
1955 was an active year for unfounded plane crash reports.
On January 16, 1955 two Rhode Island Fish & Game wardens thought they saw a boat occupied by men collecting illegal shellfish off the coast of Riverside in East Providence. They radioed for a patrol boat to investigate, and when the bloat got in the area someone set off a flair which lit up the sky. Nearby residents, not knowing what was happening, began calling the East Providence Fire Department to report a “flaming airplane” had gone down in the water.
Responding fire trucks found no plane crash, and the patrol boat didn’t find any shell fishermen either.
On August 16, 1955, a volunteer firefighter in Warwick, Rhode Island, radioed that he’d seen a plane disappear after it had emited a burst of smoke. Two residents of the Norwood section of the the city called to report the same thing. A search was instituted which expanded into nearby communities but nothing was found. The control towers at the Quonset Naval Air Station and Hillsgrove Airport reported no missing or overdue aircraft.
Two months later on October 19, 1955, residents of Charlestown, Rhode Island, phoned police, fire, and the Westerly office of the Providence Journal to report that they had seen a plane crash and a pilot parachuting to the ground. Investigation revealed that what residents had seen was a navy tractor, dropped from a large aircraft, being parachuted to the ground at the Charlestown Naval Auxiliary Air Field as part of a test.
The navy was in the process of preparing for an arctic exhibition.
On June 30, 1957, a forest fire erupted in the town of West Greenwich, Rhode Island. It was reported that the clouds of smoke produced by the fire resembled “post-explosion” smoke, as if a plane had crashed. Meanwhile, the Ground Observer Corps Filter Center in Manchester, New Hampshire, was contacted by the New England Radar Detection Center, advising that an Air Force B-52 bomber aircraft had crashed in the town of Scituate, Rhode Island. Officials at Manchester contacted a ground observation post in North Scituate. Those manning the observation post reported seeing the smoke from the fire burning in West Greenwich.
Exactly where the report of the downed bomber originated is unclear, but due to the confusion, air rescue service aircraft were dispatched to the area. Aircraft from the Quonset Naval Air Station were also activated. The Coast Guard was also notified, but no planes were reported missing or overdue, and no crash was found.
On the evening of February 7, 1963, Rhode Island State Police were contacted by people who reported seeing signal flares and helicopters in the East Greenwich area, which morphed into reports of a plane crash. Investigation revealed that the activity was part of a training exercise being conducted by the navy and that no plane crash had occurred.
On January 6, 1965, a resident of Westport, Massachusetts, reported seeing what he believed to be a low-flying plane in distress trailing smoke disappear behind a hill near the ocean shoreline. Navy and Coast Guard boats and aircraft responded to the area but found nothing and after three hours the search was called off. It was later speculated that the aircraft might have been one chartered by the Audubon Society for a low-level wild duck census. The aircraft had been in the area around the time of the sighting, but returned to New Bedford safely.
On April 21, 1967, an unidentified caller told police he was driving along Old Quaker Lane in West Warwick, Rhode Island, when he thought he saw a plane crash into a wooded area and catch fire in the Crompton area. Police from surrounding communities as well as a helicopter searched the area but nothing was found.
On the evening of February 19, 1973, a 24-year-old pilot was operating a helicopter that was approaching T. F. Green Airport in Warwick, R. I., when his radio stopped working. Knowing that he couldn’t proceed without clearance from the control tower, he decided to set down in an open field behind a gas station on Pontiac Avenue in Cranston and use a phone to contact the tower. Someone who witnessed the landing misunderstood what was happening and called the police to report that a helicopter had crashed, leading to a strong response by the police and fire departments. The first arriving units encountered the pilot who stated his reason for the unscheduled landing.
After sorting the matter out, the pilot took off again with the police maintaining contact with the airport control tower, and the pilot landed at the airport ten minutes later.
Shortly after midnight on November 8, 1974, a man called the Connecticut State Police Montville barracks to report that he’d heard what he thought was a sputtering airplane engine followed by a loud crash in the vicinity of the Waterford-East Lyme town line near I-95. Another caller described hearing a “low whining noise” before the crash. Several others also called to report a crash.
An air and ground search was organized, but nothing was found, and there were no reports of any missing aircraft. No emergency radio distress called had been received, and all Connecticut civilian and military aircraft were accounted for. The search was called off and the report was determined to be “unfounded”.
On January 8, 1988, a heavy snow storm was blowing across central New Hampshire. It was during this storm that authorities received an S.O.S. radio message from a man identifying himself only as “Dale”, a survivor of a small jet crash. Dale claimed five people had been aboard; one was dead, and the other three seriously injured.
The May Day call sparked a large scale search and rescue operation that later involved up to 20 aircraft. One aircraft in particular was a navy plane that was re-routed to begin the search. The pilot flew low level search patterns in dangerous weather conditions for over four hours, all the while remaining in radio contact with “Dale”. Unfortunately the plane was forced to leave the area due to deteriorating weather and low fuel capacity. The following day the downed plane report was determined to be a hoax.
Investigation led authorities to a 29-year-old man from Laconia, New Hampshire, who was charged and put on trial in May of 1988. He was convicted, and sentenced to one year in a federal prison, and ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation.
Coincidentally, it was about the time of the man’s trial that the following incident occurred.
On the night of October 3, 1988, a man identifying himself as a Captain from Pease Air Force Base contacted authorities in the town of Milford, New Hampshire to report that a B-1 bomber aircraft with two men aboard had crashed in a wooded area behind Chappell Tractor Sales Inc. on Route 13 South. The man further reported that the pilot had managed to eject from the aircraft before it crashed.
Milford Fire and Police responded to the area, as did members of the U.S. Air Force, but within an hour it was determined that the call had been a hoax.
Sources:
The (Woonsocket) Evening Reporter, “Joker Causes Excitement” , April 4, 1906, Pg. 3
The Evening Bulletin, (R.I.), “Rumor That Yale Men Were In Plane Crash Unconfirmed” , November 26, 1923, pg.24.
Evening Bulletin, (R. I.), “Rumor Of Plane Crash Is Reported Unfounded”, August 7, 1933, p12.
Woonsocket Call, “Bomber Crashes In No. Providence”, April 25, 1942, Pg.1
Woonsocket Call, Army Plane Crash Report Probed”, May 4, 1942 Pg. 1
Woonsocket Call, “Plane Crash Report Proves Franklin Hoax”, May 5, 1942, Pg. 2
Woonsocket Call, “Chutists Sought Near Fall River”, November 5, 1942, Pg. 1.
Providence Journal, “Plane Crash Reported”, April 21, 1947, pg. 12.
Providence Journal, “Reported Plane Crash In Warwick Proves To Be Only A Brush Fire”, April 22, 1954, pg. 3.
Evening Bulletin, (RI), “Some Game, Hey, Fellows!”, January 17, 1955, pg. 47.
Evening Bulletin, “Plane Crash Reports Are False”, August 17, 1955, pg. 2.
Evening Bulletin, “Tractor Chutes To Navy Target At Charlestown”, October 20, 1955, pg. 1.
Providence Journal, “Report Of Plane Crash ASdds To Tension At Forest Fire”, May 1, 1957, pg. 3.
Providence Journal, “Seabee Training Sets Off search For Plane Crash”, February 8, 1963, pg. 46.
Evening Bulletin, “Searchers Find No Evidence Of Plane Crash”, January 7, 1965, Pg. 3.
Evening Bulletin, “Fail To Find Plane Crash”, April 22, 1967, pg. 32.
Providence Journal, “Just Wanted To Use The Phone”, February 20, 1973, pg. 26
Westerly Sun, (R.I.), “Crash Report Is Said Unfounded”, November 8, 1974, page 2
Hartford Courant,” No Trace Found Of Airplane”, November 9, 1974, page 4.
Bangor Daily News, “”N.H. man Indicted In Plane Crash Hoax”, February 25, 1988
Bangor Daily News, “Trial Opens In Case Of Staged Plane Crash”, May 3, 1988
Bangor Daily News, “N.H. Man Convicted Of Faking Plane Crash”, May 5, 1988
Nashua Telegraph, “Jet Crash Hoax Draws Searchers”, October 4, 1988
